{"id":8680,"date":"2014-04-25T09:08:59","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T09:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=8680"},"modified":"2014-04-25T09:08:59","modified_gmt":"2014-04-25T09:08:59","slug":"average-age-of-death-for-aboriginal-users-of-community-health-and-social-services-in-toronto-is-37-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/average-age-of-death-for-aboriginal-users-of-community-health-and-social-services-in-toronto-is-37-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Average age of death for Aboriginal users of community health and social services in Toronto is 37: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Correction:\u00a0<\/strong>We originally wrote the headline for this article as \u2018Life expectancy for Aboriginals in Toronto is 37: report\u2019. After more research, we learned this is not the case. As mentioned in the article, the sample size of the population was only 109 people who used community health and social services in Toronto. The average age of death \u2013 not life expectancy – for Aboriginal People who use attend these clinics is 37.<\/p>\n

A new\u00a0report\u00a0by\u00a0Anishnawbe Health Toronto, a centre with the goal of improving health and well-being of Aboriginal People, found that the people who attend one of four community health and social service clinics in Toronto die, on average, by age 37. To put that into context \u2013 the average age of death for all Toronto residents is 74. For Aboriginal men it is 34.<\/p>\n

The largest group of aboriginals don\u2019t live in scattered northern outposts \u2013 they live in the GTA. Some call Toronto the largest First Nation reserve in the country.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was absolutely shocked,\u201d says Dr. Chandrakant Shah, who works with Anishnawbe and was one of the doctors who authored the report, to\u00a0Kevin Newman Live<\/em>. \u201cI consider Toronto a mecca for health and social services, even when it comes to Aboriginal People. When I saw the number I couldn\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Shah, 78, working at Anishnawbe is a retirement job. He started as a pediatrician and then moved into public health work.<\/p>\n

Shah noticed years ago he was going to a lot of memorials and couldn\u2019t believe how many people were in their 30s. He wondered if was just the memorials he was going to so he asked a coworker if they keep statistics on ages and deaths. Shah was then able to use the stats they had plus stats from three other Aboriginal health and social service centres in Toronto for the research. He says the deaths of so many young people keep him up at night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have a huge sample size (only 109 people from 2010 \u2013 2012), but we think it is representative,\u201d says Dr. Rajbir Klair, one of the reports\u2019 authors, to\u00a0Kevin Newman Live<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s a very low age, but there are a fair amount of kids and transients on the list plus a lot of the population is displaced or homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shah, Klair and the third author, Dr. Allison Reeves were less concerned about the actual cause of death, which in most cases is related to poverty, but the root causes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was interested in what their life was like,\u201d Shah says. So in addition to the quantitative chart, they also did a qualitative analysis interviewing 20 people close to the deceased.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to a residential school and the things that happened there \u2013 I can\u2019t even talk about\u2026that\u2019s why I drank so much. I just couldn\u2019t be a father,\u201d said one of the people interviewed about what a deceased said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really think it\u2019s like a broken heart syndrome. It was [the deceased\u2019s] loneliness for his true identity, like not knowing anything about who his people are because his family and his parents and his traditions were all lost,\u201d said another.<\/p>\n

The report shows much of the causes lie in the history of colonization, marginalization, discrimination and racism. Shah adds everything from treaties to the Indian Act result in losing cultures, languages and a way of living. Many of the deceased had a lack of housing, education and stable employment. This manifests in different ways such as finding happiness elsewhere such as drugs and alcohol.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call this a delayed tsunami effect,\u201d says Shah. He suggests the only way to solve the problem is with an upstream approach of more housing and employment opportunities. \u201cPeople have to have a sense of identity and empowerment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report also suggests an increase in partnerships with the Aboriginal community and cultural competency training.<\/p>\n

He says our policies are \u201cscrewed up\u201d because most of us non-Aboriginals don\u2019t know anything about Aboriginal issues and as a result there is no empathy. A lot of people don\u2019t understand how some people can\u2019t get a job or rent an apartment and this creates an empathy gap.<\/p>\n

The group presented their findings in a report to Toronto City Council a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey (councillors) were pretty shocked,\u201d says Klair. \u201cEspecially if you think we are in the Toronto area and have access to services.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report is asking for a multi-year plan with defined and measurable outcomes for public education, an employment strategy and for Aboriginals to be better represented on city agencies, boards and corporations.<\/p>\n

The city has proclaimed 2014 to be the year of truth and reconciliation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City values the contributions of the Aboriginal community in Toronto, many of whom are Residential School Survivors or their family members who have been affected by the legacy of the residential school system,\u201d said Councillor Mike Layton in a\u00a0statement\u00a0last November. \u201cThis year-long proclamation acknowledges those injustices of the residential school system on Aboriginal peoples. It also adds to the ongoing work the City is doing to build strong working relationships with Aboriginal communities and partnerships for the development of successful programs and policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far nothing has changed as was recommended by the report, but Klair and Shah both know the gears move pretty slowly sometimes. Shah jokes about his age saying, \u201csocial changes don\u2019t come quick, but I\u2019m getting smarter and still have a lot of passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: ctvnews\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Correction:\u00a0We originally wrote the headline for this article as \u2018Life expectancy for Aboriginals in Toronto is 37: report\u2019. After more research, we learned this is not the case. As mentioned in the article, the sample size of the population was only 109 people who used community health and social services in Toronto. The average age …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[572,394,570,571,163,348],"class_list":["post-8680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news-and-analysis","tag-community-health","tag-death","tag-life-expectancy","tag-social-services","tag-ticker","tag-world-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8682,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8680\/revisions\/8682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}